Gita Steiner-Khamsi holds dual appointments as William Heard Kilpatrick Professor of Comparative Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, and UNESCO Chair in Comparative Education Policy at the Geneva Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies. She serves as Senior Adviser for NORRAG (Network for International Policies and Cooperation in Education and Training), based at the Geneva Graduate Institute, and is a board member of Columbia University's Harriman Institute for Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies. Her educational foundation includes a Dr. Phil. in social psychology with minors in sociology and anthropology from the University of Zurich (1983). Prior to academia, she developed Switzerland's first cantonal policy research unit for multicultural education at the Ministry of Education of Canton Zurich. Her research program spans three interconnected domains: Comparative Policy Studies examining policy transfer/borrowing in education reforms through system-theoretical lenses; Global Governance in Education analyzing soft governance mechanisms like knowledge brokerage and transnational accreditation; and Comparative Methodology advancing mixed-methods designs, social network analysis, and bibliometrics. Geographic specialization focuses on Mongolia and Central Asia, with multilingual analysis (German, English, French, Farsi) informing her work on immigrant/asylum seeker education policies. As past president of the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES), she has authored thirteen books and numerous articles while holding visiting professorships at Stanford, Humboldt University, Aarhus University, and University of Oslo. Her NORRAG leadership drives research on equity in global education development through a network of 5,800 members.








